The Greatest Thing
by Lysimache
Summary: After the events of Moulin Rouge, Toulouse reflects back on his unrequited love for Christian. Slash.


Title: The Greatest Thing  
Author: Jen Faulkner (jfaulkne@eden.rutgers.edu)  
Pairing: Toulouse/Christian  
Category: romance, angst  
Rating: PG-13  
Warnings: Sadness. No smut, I'm afraid. M/M (non-explicit) slash.  
Homoerotic content.  
Spoilers: For the whole movie, yes.  
Feedback: Please!  
Archive: Sure, just let me know.  
Disclaimer: All things MR belong to Baz Luhrmann and Fox. You may  
recognize bits from lots of songs used in the movie. The  
song "Nature Boy," quoted at the beginning, was written by  
Eden Ahbez.  
Summary: After the events of Moulin Rouge, Toulouse reflects back on  
his unrequited love for Christian.  
Notes: I need to go see MR a third time. But it was obvious to me  
from the first viewing that Toulouse loved Christian.  
Unrequitedly, since I have a hard time imagining Christian with  
anyone but Satine, for at least a while after her death.   
  
For Glim, for so many reasons and always.  
  
*****  
  
"The Greatest Thing"  
  
by Jen Faulkner  
  
There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy.  
They say he wandered very far, very far,  
Over land and sea.  
A little shy and sad of eye  
But very wise was he.  
And then one day,  
One magic day, he passed my way.  
While we spoke of many things,  
Fools and kings,  
This he said to me:  
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn   
is just to love and be loved in return."  
  
  
He came into my life through a gaping hole. The Argentinian fell  
through the floorboards, but I, I fell in love.  
  
I had not expected that, no. Who expects such beauty to be merely a  
floor below them? It was not just his face as perfect as any I'd ever  
painted, but his soul -- his soul -- that sparkled like a diamond in  
the dirt.  
  
He believed in love, you see.  
  
Oh, we all said that we believed, that we upheld the ideals of truth,  
beauty, freedom, and love, but what did we know of them? Before him,  
we thought of those four as the passport to a dark, licentious  
playground. They meant to us the world of the brothels, the killing  
fury of absinthe. What did we know?  
  
He knew. He knew that he had never been in love before her. Many  
times I had believed myself in love, with whatever pretty face passed  
me by. I had died of love a thousand times.  
  
A thousand times I had picked up a pretty poet languishing in the  
gutter, some even with talent, yes. I promoted them, pushed them off  
on others, dropped them as soon as I was bored of them. I like to  
think I helped some of them.  
  
He, despite what Satine thought, was never one of them. More than  
pretty -- beautiful; more than talented -- inspired. And the gutters  
of Montmartre never touched him. No more would the dirt have clung to  
an angel.  
  
He believed in love, you see.  
  
Love lifted him up to the heavens, where he belonged. Even if he had  
no object for all that love before Satine, love always surrounded and  
poured through him, like air, like oxygen.  
  
How could one not love him?  
  
I loved him like I had loved no one else. How wonderful life was now  
he was in the world! My beautiful, shining boy. I would have been  
glad to die for love of him, but since I didn't have that choice, I  
did what I could. I brought him back together with Satine, whom he  
loved, and who loved him. I didn't know she was dying.  
  
I told him that she loved him, when he had come to doubt it. His  
heart was breaking to think that she had never loved him, and I too  
was in torment seeing him with all his passion gone, drained, washed  
away by the cold rain.  
  
I almost told him then, alone in his room, how I loved him. I wanted  
to be the one who could soothe his pain. But no, I was not the one he  
loved.  
  
So I said instead, "She loves you," and all the time meant, "*I* love   
you."  
  
I told him how much I longed for love, and I wished he could see that  
it was his love that I desired more than words could express. I could  
not put my love into words. But from him I had come to understand  
truly what art, what love, could mean.  
  
He yelled at me to leave him there alone, and I did. Hurting like  
that, I left him, since I was not the one who could heal him. Such  
grand ideas I had had, that I would confess my love, and we would fly  
away. It would be as if my life would finally begin again, with him  
by my side, and I would leave all the ugliness that had been consuming  
me behind, reborn in his beauty.  
  
But the truth was that he did not love me as I loved him. He liked  
me, certainly, but his passion was for her, never for me, an ugly  
dwarf who lived an ugly life surrounded by the squalor of his friends,  
the pimps and girls from the brothels. My life had long drowned any  
chance at a freedom from vice in a tidal wave of absinthe.   
  
How could I even think to offer up my love, twisted and black compared  
to his purity?  
  
So I told him, "She loves you," and never, "*I* love you."  
  
To leave him there alone, broken, it hurt me as nothing else could. I  
could offer him no comfort, not even one embrace. Feeling a thousand  
times a fool, I left him.  
  
Satie had cursed me for a fool for loving someone who did not love me,  
Audrey had called me worse than a fool -- but what else was I to do?  
Every moment watching him with Satine -- and we were always watching  
-- was agony, but also the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  
*That* was love, two spirits dancing in the starlight.  
  
The Argentinian even tried to convince him to stay away from Satine,  
for my sake. Wasted effort, I could have told him. Only death would  
part them.  
  
And then her death did part them. I had been so terrified, hysterical  
to think that the Duke's man might kill my beloved, so afraid for his  
life, when all the time it was she who was near death. But at least  
she died reunited with him. He would never have forgiven himself had  
she died alone.  
  
It is thanks to me, yes, that he put aside his jealousy and anger and  
believed one last time in love. His own words, shouted out with all  
my strength.  
  
Un cri du coeur: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to  
love, and be loved in return."  
  
I almost could not remember those words, both wanting and not wanting  
him to walk away from her. But I wanted to see him happy.  
  
Happy? With Satine dead? But I did not know. Even had I known, I  
could have done nothing else. One must still love, even if only death  
awaits you at the end.  
  
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in  
return."  
  
Oh, Christian. You were loved more than you ever knew.  
  
Would that you had loved me in return.  
  
**********  
Fin.  
  
Feedback greatly (and gratefully!) appreciated. 


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